Re-orienting Development and Accelerating Production to Create Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II

The challenge:
Change to mobile from console and PC
SHOWCASE VISUAL FIDELITY
ship by end of year…5 months

The situation:
No team member did mobile
Engine not complete

iOS Advantges
Huge, growing install base
Well established distribution
In-app purchases
3d games emerging at this time
Apple was interested in helping
Dev hardware was accessible
Certification speed is fast

R-orient to mobile
what we had to learn
iOS mobile market
The competition
The consumer
Technical limits

What we had to maintain
Design
Quality
Commitment

What to improve apon
Scheduling
Fast decision making
Outsourcing and external pipeline
Communication

What to jettison
Perfectionism
Rigid adherence to global milestones
Throw out hesitation and doubt

Game must be made specifically for device
Not a port or knock off
Touch interface was key

Game to be tailored ego mobile audience
Not hardcore gamers
Intuitive and instantly fun
Sort meaningful game play under 2 minutes
Unique high quality visuals

As accelerating production

Hybrid production style due to rapid dev cycle and small team
Waterfall content production
Iterative design
Scrum style communication

scoped out entire project early
Task estimates based on vertical slice
Time-boxed all features and content
Forced team to think holistically

Simplified schedule and tracking

Maintained tried and true design process
Adapted existing chair design
Team was a invested from day one

Modular features
Proved core gameplay first
Scalable features and prune able content

Scoped for device
Maximum replay for content

Rapid prototyping and iteration
Team was already experienced with unreal engine
Had running within 3weeks
Art style locked down in 4 weeks
Frequent play testing every other day for 10-30 mins

Speeding up the process
Solved technical issues early
Pushed forward – cut features for later releases
Ramped up outsourcing quickly
Smoothed and simplified pipeline
Empowered leads to make key decisions
Kept everyone in the loop

Lessons learned
Took a year to create but was released in 5 months
Design mobile games for mobile customers
In-app purchases critical
Title updates critical to long tail success
Meta-game keeps players coming back. Achievement based keeps people playing
Traditional production practices still apply. If content is not complete push it out
Leverages outsourcing but needs a contingency plan
mobile multiplayer is very different
Top app list is critical to sales
Use customer feedback to refine gameplay

Infinity blade 2
Demonstrate new os capabilities
Bigger and long than original
Deeper story
More variation, less repetition
More robust social component

Used IB1’s analytics for IB2s target hardware… Hardware was the same for both games

For in-app purchases they analyzed what players tended to buy the most
We the Eakins vs enemy difficulty balanced throughout the game…

CREATING A SEQUAL
Shifted focus from how do we do mobile to how can we make it better
Content pipeline and estimates were known quantities
Tech and tools was familiar
Problem areas and features from IB1 were front loaded

Updates vs sequels
Diminishing returns – people stopped asking for updates and started asking for the sequel
Objective milestone acid test
Analytics vital to understanding your customer
Learned the difference between beta vs final tech
The vocal minority damaged popularity of IB during the switch to final release of iOS 5

Lessons learned
Did 5.5 months to release and 6 months of updates
Take advantage of the small agile team in mobile
Design for the device and customer only
Use familiar tech when working on titles on s small timeline
Create content and features in a modular fashion… “kill your babies” meaning remove features in game if can’t hit dates
Structure content for multiple devices
Cut early, cut deep
Understand meta game, what is it really about
Play test play test play test
Use updates and Analytics

Avoid
Do not assume your personal mobile experience is typical for an average customer… Yu may be hardcore but they probably aren’t
Avoid shoehorning console into mobile
Perfectionism- focus on most critical visible issues
Over adherence to traditional design methods
Overlooking tried and true production practices
Over-compartmentalism of team members… Tam members should be able to do more than their specialty
Putting outsourcing on critical path without a plan b
Treat it as a AAA title